Tesla CEO Elon Musk has issued a political endorsement as the midterm election looms large, urging Americans to vote Republican so that power is shared in Washington amid Democrat control of the White House.
Musk addressed his remarks to voters who may have not yet made up their minds about how they’re going to vote on Nov. 8 or might be open to changing their minds.
“To independent-minded voters: Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic,” Musk said in a
post on Twitter.
The endorsement comes as little surprise as Musk said earlier that, while he had in the past voted Democrat, he would now be voting for Republicans, blaming Democrats for sowing division.
“In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party. But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican,” he said in a
May 18 post on Twitter.
Musk, who has in the past described himself as a political moderate, has rarely endorsed candidates but
has donated to members of both parties.
Days after revealing his electoral preferences in May, the Tesla chief explained that he had switched from “moderate” Democrat to “moderate” Republican “as I think many independent voters have done.”
“We will know the magnitude of this trend in November. I think it’s big,” he said in a
post on Twitter at the time.
Red Wave Coming?
With Election Day fast approaching, polls are showing that the GOP is poised to retake both the House and Senate, though the battle for control of the upper chamber is more closely contested as Democrats try to stave off a Republican red wave.
Polling aggregator RealClearPolitics shows that Republicans are ahead of Democrats by 2.5 points, or 47.9 percent to 45.4 percent in a
generic Congressional vote poll.
Democrats are projected to win 174 House seats compared to Republicans’ 227, with 34 seats considered toss-ups,
according to RealClearPolitics.
The race for the Senate is tighter, with Republicans expected to pick up 48 Senate seats to Democrats’ 44, with 8 races seen as toss-ups,
according to RealClearPolitics.
In poll after poll, Republicans have been shown to hold an edge over Democrats on bread-and-butter issues like the economy, inflation, and gas prices.
Polls gauging voter priorities also suggest Democrats are less in touch with what matters most for Americans. A recent
Gallup poll showed the economy is the top election issue and climate change the least, suggesting voters are more closely aligned with Republican platforms in terms of priorities.
For Republicans, key messages this election cycle have been President Joe Biden’s handling of the economy amid multi-decade high inflation, as well as rising rates of crime in major cities, and the illegal immigration crisis.
Democrats, by contrast, have focused more on issues that appear to be less top-of-mind for voters, like abortion, climate change, and access to voting.
The most recent poll of likely voters from left-leaning CNN (
pdf) showed that 51 percent of respondents said inflation and the economy would be the key issue determining how they'll cast their vote, compared to 15 percent pointing to abortion, 9 percent to gun policy, 6 percent to immigration, and 4 percent to climate change.
Over the last few days, Biden and former President Donald Trump
held competing rallies and made their final arguments for why Americans should back either Democrats or Republicans.
“The radical Democrats want to turn America into communist Cuba or socialist Venezuela,” Trump told supporters over the weekend at a rally in Miami.
“And the Republican Party, we are determined that America will never be a socialist country.”
Biden, meanwhile, argued at a rally in Yonkers that “democracy is literally on the ballot” and called this election “a choice between two fundamentally different visions of America.”
Frank Fang contributed to this report.
